Austin L. Churchhttps://austinlchurch.com
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.3Freelance Taxes – Everything You Need to Knowhttps://austinlchurch.com/freelance-taxes-everything-you-need-to-know/
https://austinlchurch.com/freelance-taxes-everything-you-need-to-know/#respondSun, 17 Mar 2019 00:12:03 +0000http://austinlchurch.com/?p=2891One of the best things I ever did for my freelance writing business was hire a bookkeeper. I’ve got a good head for numbers, and I usually made As in math. But every time a task related to accounting edged toward the top of my to-do list, I had to stifle a yawn. My energy

]]>One of the best things I ever did for my freelance writing business was hire a bookkeeper.

I’ve got a good head for numbers, and I usually made As in math.

But every time a task related to accounting edged toward the top of my to-do list, I had to stifle a yawn. My energy level would plummet.

Excel. Ugh. QuickBooks? Ugher.

My first bookkeeper studied accounting in college and has worked for a wide range of business types and sizes—everything from large corporations to small businesses; freelancers like myself to non-profits.

She told me that when she received the first big envelope of receipts she felt “giddy.”

Woah.

I most definitely do not feel giddy when thinking about cleaning up somebody else’s accounting mess.

Clearly, she was the right woman for the job, and by hiring someone who was BETTER at accounting than I am, I freed myself up to focus on the things I’m good at: writing, marketing, and selling.

Sometimes you have to spend a little money to better play to your strengths.

Even so, because I was able to spend more time on high-leverage tasks, my increased productivity (and billing) more than offset the monthly cost of bookkeeping fees.

For a professional to keep my books also makes an audit by the IRS less likely. (I’ve written before about how one of the three smart reasons to spend money is to reduce risk.)

Yes, I recommend that you hire other people to be better, smarter, faster than you are at certain necessary business activities.

I also recommend that you learn accounting and tax basics so that you aren’t flying totally blind. Nearly every day I must carefully consider when and how to make a purchase so that I can minimize my tax liability. That’s my job, not my bookkeeper’s or CPA’s.

Which brings me to an important point. Many, many conversations with freelancers about business finances have led me to this conclusion: MOST freelancers miss out on MOST tax write-offs.

Either through ignorance or sheer laziness, they put money in Uncle Sam’s pocket that could have legally kept.

Admittedly, it’s hard to remember all of those write-offs, come to tax season. It’s harder to keep track of all your receipts and keep organized records of spending. It’s hardest to navigate the quagmire of tax law.

Spoiler Alert: You can download this entire blog post as a guide at the bottom. That way, you’ll have it on hand when you need to file your freelance writer tax return. Savvy?

Word to the wise: Hire a CPA in addition to your bookkeeper. The good ones have tax planning questionnaires that help you identify and take advantage of every relevant tax credit and write-off.

You may not care much about business accounting practices, but I bet you do care about keeping more of your hard-earned cash and spending it on things that really matter to you.

And that’s the crux of this whole conversation about freelance writer taxes.

First things first, do freelance writers pay taxes?

Yes. At least the ones who don’t want to get in trouble with the IRS.

You’ve heard the old saw: The only certainties in life are death and taxes. You will pay taxes on the income you earn from freelance writing business.

You can feel like you shouldn’t have to pay taxes. You can also feel like you can fly off a tall building. May I recommend the non-suicidal route?

Paying taxes is one of the privileges that comes with living in this fine, imperfect country called the United States.

How do you keep track of business expenses?

Chances are, you’ll track expenses in a variety of ways and develop a somewhat sane system over time.

Ultimately, I bought the bullet and started paying a bookkeeper monthly to organize and categorize all of my business expenses.

Why monthly?

Well, by the time April rolls around, I can’t remember all of the details about my own expenses. For example, my bookkeeper recently asked me to give her more information about a $3,000 charge on my AMEX credit card.

My response? “Uh…”

Figuring out what the charge was took me thirty minutes. Just imagine if I’d waited longer!

Your memory may be better than mine, but I end up spending a lot less time on my bank/credit reconciliation if I do it while all the expenses are still fresh in my mind.

If you plan to keep track of your own business expenses, then use QuickBooks or FreshBooks. And do all of your bank reconciliation during the first week of each new month.

Or if, like me, you want your bookkeeper to do the tracking and reconciliation, then ask him/her to send you any questions about specific transactions and expenses during the first week of each new month.

What type of business entity should you choose?

For more than six years, my business was a sole proprietorship. I tracked my expenses and itemized the deductions on my Schedule A (Form 1040) on my tax return. (Is that enough IRS mumbo jumbo for you?)

From a tax perspective, Austin L. Church was an individual doing business (DBA) as Bright Newt, which was the name of my business at the time.

My social security number served as my Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN), and I was able to use my SSN to set up a business checking account without any trouble.

Other than that “DBA” nuance, which sometimes appears on documents, my business entity wasn’t distinct from me. I didn’t pay corporate taxes or anything like that. All revenues and taxes passed through Bright Newt to me.

In terms of taxes, other entity structures—including C-Corp and some LLCs—work differently.

I decided to register a single-member Limited Liability Company (LLC) because I wanted more liability protection.

If a client were to sue me, that protection would make it difficult for the other party to seize my personal assets—for example, my family’s personal savings account. Or our house.

Other than that liability protection, the credibility that comes with an LLC, and using a new FEIN instead of my social security number, not a whole lot has changed on the tax front. Revenues still “pass through” Wunderbar LLC to me as an individual.

The specific rules governing business entities vary from state to state. So I recommend that you find a good business attorney and barter a blog post or some web content for his/her advice.

Picking an entity structure is primarily about protecting your assets, both business and personal, and minimizing your tax liability.

What type of entity structure makes sense for you at this stage? That will depend on your financial situation and business goals, but most CPAs would probably recommend a sole proprietorship, assuming you have no business partners or employees.

If you have very few assets at this point in life, then certain entity structures will be overkill. You only need an armored car if you’re a target.

You can always form a new entity later. A common misconception about legal entities is that they are etched in stone. Forming a new entity costs money, sure. But that’s just another part of doing business.

What should you pick for your freelance writer tax business code?

The IRS uses “Principal Business” or “Professional Activity Codes” to classify sole proprietorships. True to their name, the codes describe your primary business activity. They are based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).

You start by selecting the category that describes your primary business activity, and then you select the sub-category or activity that best describes “the principal source of your sales or receipts.”

You’ll end up with a six-digit code that means something to the IRS (and naturally, nobody else), which you will enter on your Schedule C or C-EZ on Line B.

As you could probably guess, you won’t find a code for “freelance writer.” That would be too easy.

Several categories and subcategories come close, so you can select whichever one you prefer. For example, you could pick “711510 – Independent artists, writers, & performers,” which you will find below “Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, & Related Industries.”

Because I get paid to write copy and content for businesses, I think one of the options under “Other Professional, Scientific, & Technical Services” is more accurate: either 541800 (“Advertising & related services”) or 541990 (“All other professional, scientific, & technical services”).

If I recall, I chose 541990 because I provide a mix of marketing, writing, and business development services.

Just in case some other freelancers and creatives happen to be reading this, here are some of your codes:

How do you figure out what taxes you will have to pay?

As a general rule of thumb, I recommend that you set aside 30% of what you make for taxes.

Not setting aside enough has come back to bite me more than once. When your freelancing business starts generating real cash, it’s hard to keep your fingers out of the honeypot.

“It’s finally happening!” you think.

You might start to feel a little bit of pride in your bank account.

The last thing you want to do is gut it so that you can pay your estimated quarterly taxes.

Should you still pay your estimated taxes quarterly?

Few things in business are more discouraging than having your best year then realizing at tax time that you don’t have the cash to pay what you owe. Your triumphant year ends in a whimper.

You either have to get on a payment plan with the IRS or use a credit card.

To avoid this scenario, I made several adjustments:

Dividing my anticipated tax liability by twelve and adding that number to my monthly operating expenses

Adjusting my sales goals to account for that higher target

Tucking away the monthly tax allotment in a SmartyPig savings account where I can’t see the money

Not touching those funds under any circumstances

Point #2 deserves special emphasis. Let’s say you want your “take home” pay from freelancing to be $4,000 per month.

Beyond your salary, you also need $500 per month for everything from business lunches and gas to website hosting and saving for a new laptop.

The $4,500 total represents your net, or after-tax, revenue. You really need to earn more than that because you may owe upwards of 30% of your gross revenues in state and federal taxes.

You need to make $4500 to pay your operating expenses and salary.

You can expect to pay 30% of your revenues in taxes.

$4,500 is 70% of $6,428.

Your monthly sales target should thus be closer to $6500, not $4,500.

Uncle Sam will come for his slice of your pie sooner or later. By setting aside more than enough dough for your tax return, you can reduce stress and anxiety throughout the year.

How do you figure out your estimated quarterly tax payment?

Each year’s quarterly payments are calculated base on your total tax bill the year before. In other words, the IRS assumes you will make the exact same amount of money and have the exact same amount of deductions and credits.

The problem is that that almost never happens.

You can respond to fluctuations in earning in several ways:

1) Send in your quarterly Form 1040-ES with a check for the amount on the voucher while at the same time you put whatever is left over from the 30% that month in savings

2) Work with a CPA to determine exactly how much your estimated tax payment should be based on your up-to-date financials. If your earnings go up one year, your quarterly payment should exceed the estimate shown on the Form 1040-ES from the year prior.

3) Make your best guess, send in a check for your estimated payment, and prepared to take a hit the following April—i.e., any extra taxes owed along with penalties for underpaying

Why does it seem like freelancers pay so much in taxes?

Freelancers have to pay self-employment tax on money they earn.

Officially known as the SECA tax (Self-Employment Contributions Act), self-employment tax is a freelance writer’s version of FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act), which employers and employees must pay.

You will pay SECA on your net earnings from self-employment. Self-employment tax has two parts, Social Security and Medicare:

If you have a 9-to-5 job and are a W2 employee, you pay 50% of FICA, and your employer pays the other half. Employees rarely think about this because most companies take these taxes out of each paycheck and send them straight to the government.

No wonder so many freelancers get confused!

Unless you looked really closely at your tax return, you never knew FICA had two halves. You certainly never had to shell out the full 100%.

As a freelancer, you are both the employer and the employee. Instead of your boss calculating and withholding taxes for you automatically each month, you become responsible for paying them yourself—and paying the employer half that you never had to think about as an employee.

This situation may seem unfair, but it’s not. More money may come out of your pocket, but you aren’t paying more in taxes.

You’re simply responsible for the other hidden half that your employer always paid.

You have to focus on the upside. Yes, you pay 100% of Social Security and Medicare—aka, self-employment tax—but you also get to keep any profits left over after you pay expenses and taxes. If you have a great year, you can give yourself a big raise.

We freelancers must think like business owners, not employees. We’re not victims. When we grow our businesses, we will owe more taxes: twice as much as our friends who have W2 jobs.

What are the most common deductions for freelancers?

Advertising

You can deduct the costs of printed promotional items with your name on them (e.g., t-shirts and hats), marketing collateral (e.g., business cards and brochures), sponsorships, and online and digital advertising (e.g., Facebook ads and Google AdWords banner ads).

You can also deduct special events intended to promote your business, as well as the food and entertainment costs associated with them.

(Yes, you can write off the clown you pay to show up at the party at your new office space.)

In addition, you can deduct the cost of your internet service as either an office expense or utility, though working from a home office will require that you calculate the percentage of work-related usage and apply that number to total cost of the service. You can’t claim the whole amount.

Finally, don’t forget domain registration fees and website hosting. I’ve written at length about the part your freelance writer website plays in a healthy pipeline. You can deduct most internet-related expenses on Schedule C.

Auto Expenses

Do you use your vehicle for business purposes? If yes, you have two options:

You can stick with multiply the number of business-related miles by IRS mileage rate for that year (e.g. $0.56 per mile) and enter the total on Form 1040; or

You can itemize gas and other expenses, including insurance, depreciation, and repairs, on Form 4562.

My 1998 4Runner has never required significant maintenance, so up to this point, I have written off miles, not transportation expenses.

Remember this one important exception to tracking mileage: You cannot include the miles burned commuting to an office in your total.

Tons of apps like Expensify make it fairly easy to track mileage.

Interest & Bank Fees

Who wants to talk about credit card debt? Not me.

But I do occasionally have debt on my business credit card. Sometimes you just have to go to that conference.

By all means, pay off that card each month, but if you do carry a balance, be sure to write off any interest you pay.

You can also deduct the cost of bank fees and interest on loans, though if the loan was also part personal, you can only write off the interest on the business-related part of the loan.

You can claim fees and interest on Line 16 of your Schedule C.

Meals & Entertainment

We all have to eat, and it makes sense to schedule some business meetings during lunch.

Business-related meals must meet these three criteria:

You or one of your employees was present

The meal related directly to “the active conduct of your trade or business”

The meal wasn’t “lavish or extravagant”

You cannot treat your favorite client to a weekend in Vegas and write-off the trip. But assuming the purpose of your lunch meeting was to discuss business (and potentially get business), you can write off 50% of the total.

The good news is that there’s no hard-and-fast rule that says, “To get the 50% deduction, you have to pick up the tab.” You can pay only for your meal and still get the deduction.

You can deduct 50% of the meals meant to “entertain” clients.

You can deduct 100% of food purchased for employees.

Just be sure to write down the name of the person you were with somewhere on the receipt. Then, keep either the hard copy of your receipt or a digital version that you have captured using a scanner app like Expensify.

You paid a web designer friend to redo your client’s website? You wrote the new web content and managed the project? Deduct her design fees.

Note: If you pay your designer more than $600 of the course of the year, you must send her a 1099.

Depreciation

The IRS gives business owners, including freelancers, an annual allowance for wear and tear, deterioration, or obsolescence of property.

Most of us make a living, using our cellphones, laptops, other tools (like cameras), buildings, machinery, vehicles, furniture, equipment, and some intangible property, including patents, copyrights, and computer software.

This income tax deduction allows us to recover the replacements cost. In order to qualify for this deduction, you must own the “property,” and you must use it for income-producing activity.

The thing itself must have a useful life of more than one year. In other words, you CANNOT deduct a piece of property if you use it and get rid of it in the same year.

For example, the IRS allows you to claim depreciation on your new iPhone as an “unreimbursed business expense” if you use it regularly for freelancing.

You can also elect under Section 179 to expense part or all of the cost of a new cellphone you purchased for your business. Form 4562 will help you calculate any depreciation. You enter the total for depreciation on Line 13 of your Schedule C.

Geez. Are they trying to make our brains bleed? Think back to the least interesting text you have ever read. Well, that yawn factory is about to lose its number one spot.

My advice?

No matter where you are in your freelancing career, your time should be more valuable than your money. Go land some new writing gigs, and pay a CPA to be your brain in this department.

Regardless, you will report depreciation on Form 4562 (Depreciation & Amortization).

Domain Registration & Website Hosting

I already alluded to these two expenses in the Apps & Software section.

Many common expenses have designated lines on the tax schedule, but some, including your domain registration and website hosting, don’t fit into a particular category. To deduct these expenses, list them on Line 48 of your Schedule C. You will then include them in the total on Line 27.

Education, Professional Development & Memberships

From time to time, you may buy a course, guide, or some other resource to improve your skills. You can deduct any education costs related to making yourself and your business more valuable.

You can also deduct the cost of conferences, classes, seminars, and webinars—any event where your goal was gaining business knowledge and or developing your marketable skills.

In addition, if you belong to a paid Mastermind or group that helps you with your freelance writing career, you can deduct membership fees.

Obviously, there’s a fine line you have to walk here. An expensive dog training manual may enable you to train your dog. Training your dog may make you happy. Being happy may make you feel as light as a butterfly and ready to do your best work.

Nice try. What you learn from the manual doesn’t create tangible value for your business the same way buying an advanced course on SEO or copywriting creates value.

The IRS puts it this way: “It can be qualifying work-related education only if it maintains or improves skills needed in your present work.”

To deduct qualifying work-related education, put the total amount on Line 21 in your Schedule A (Form 1040) or Line 7 of your Schedule A (Form 1040NR).

Hardware & Office Equipment

There’s clearly some overlap here with the Apps & Software and Depreciation deductions. If you’re a freelance writer, then you’ll need any number of devices and software tools to serve your clients.

These fall under the umbrella of “office equipment”:

Laptops

Desktop computers

Smartphones

Tablets

Printers

Tech hardware

Online subscriptions

Be honest. If you don’t really use your Netflix subscription for business purposes, then don’t deduct it. Knocking your taxable income down a few bucks isn’t worth increasing the likelihood of an audit.

In like fashion, if you own more than one computer, then don’t try to deduct both. That will be a hard sell to the IRS because it stands to reason that you use at least one computer, part of the time, for personal stuff—e.g., buying movie tickets or gorging on Harry Potter fan fiction. (You know who you are.)

But subscriptions to web apps like Focus@Will or SmarterQueue do help you serve your clients, and therefore they deserve a place on your tax return.

You’re generally safe as long as you can prove that you needed the stuff to stay relevant in your industry.

For example, if you get paid to write movie reviews, you could, in fact, write off your Netflix subscription. I take back what I said earlier.

Note well: You have the choice to spread the deduction over the number of years the IRS considers to be the useful life of the item—though they may not agree with your opinion—or you can write the entire cost off in one fell swoop as a Section 179 deduction of up to $500,000 (at the time of writing).

Home Office

For many freelancers, the Holy Grail is working from home. You can wriggle into your flattering jodhpurs and Kelly Kapowski sweatshirt (sans neck) and really thrash a client’s web content.

But just because you can crank out new product descriptions on your kitchen table doesn’t mean that you can count your kitchen as a home office.

Don’t fret. The IRS has published a thorough, 35-page, um, treatise, on business use of your home under the memorable title of Publication 587.

(Let no non-U.S. citizen say that we lack for originality!)

In order to qualify, you must use part of your home “exclusively and regularly” as your principal place of business. And your cozy writing nook must pass muster in three areas: exclusivity, regularity, and precedence.

Kitchen table? No. Desk in a corner of your bedroom? Tentatively yes.

Exclusivity means that you must use your work area only for business activities. Your work area doesn’t need to have a “permanent partition”—what a relief; that would be getting awfully close to a cubicle. “The area used for business can be a room or other separately identifiable space.”

As for regularity, you must use your home office in a predictable fashion—think, during regular business hours. You don’t have to chain yourself there forty hours a week, but you yourself know the difference between regular and irregular. Regular is how often you eat. Irregular is how often you go to the gym. (Just kidding.)

And in terms of precedence, you can work from other places—namely, the coffeeshop where you go to procrastinate. However, you should spend most of your time doing your most important tasks at your home office.

Now that you’re crystal clear on the requirements, write that sucker off. The IRS gives you two options for the deduction: Regular and Simplified.

Yay. More choices.

With the Regular option, you can write off expenses like mortgage interest. For example, in Box 1 on Form 1098, let’s say that you entered $10,000 of mortgage interest. If your home office comprises 10% of your home, you can deduct 10%, or $1000, as part of your home office expenses.

With the Simplified option, you measure the approximate square footage of your workspace and multiply that number (up to a maximum of 300) by $5. Check out the Simplified Method Worksheet contained in Publication 587 mentioned above.

You will use Form 8829 for the Regular method.

Report the deduction on Line 30 of Schedule C of Form 1040. Whether or not you must complete and attach

If you used the Regular method, you will attach Form 8829 to your return.

Worth noting is that if your home office deduction causes your business to be in the red, then the IRS may disallow some expenses or require that you carry them over to the next tax year.

Is that clear as mud? Excellent!

I strongly advise you to use the Simplified option AND to enlist the services of your friendly neighborhood CPA.

Insurance

Speaking of home offices, you can also claim your renter’s or homeowner’s insurance.

Assuming your freelance writing business had a net profit, you can also claim any medical, dental, or long-term care insurance premiums on Line 1 of Schedule A of Form 1040.

Just be sure to hang onto your receipts so that you can calculate the total at the end of the year. You’ll put it on Line 18 (Office expense) of your Schedule C.

A freelance writer can also deduct the cost of newsletters, journals, magazines, and other subscriptions, including any publications to which you hope to sell an article. All of these subscriptions serves your writing business.

Sole proprietors and single-member LLCs will use Line 22 (“Supplies”) on Schedule C for this.

But what about all of your other deductible items, such as computers, software, web servers, printers and equipment? If you’re not 100% sure how to deduct your new standing desk, then talk to a CPA. The IRS has extensive guidelines on the depreciation of business assets, and how you write off their depreciation depends on a number of factors, such as whether you expect to make a lot more money freelancing in the future.

Research Materials

You’re a freelancer writer. You decide to write a book about horseback riding. And shooting a traditional bow. And shooting a bow on horseback.

You can deduct your riding and shooting lessons, as well as the tools like Call Recorder and Screenflow that you use to record and edit interviews.

Whatever you pay a research or virtual assistant to help you is deductible as well.

The IRS generally considers the costs of research and experimentation as capital expenses. However, you can elect to deduct these R&D costs as regular expenses in the first year you incur them.

Individuals (including single-member LLCs, which are disregarded entities) will use Schedule C of Form 1040. Add your research costs in Part 5, so that you include them in the total on Lines 48 and 27a.

Partnerships will use Form 1065. Corporations will use Form 1120, and S Corps will use Form 1120-S.

Repairs & Maintenance

When your laptop, camera, or some other piece of essential equipment breaks, you must repair it in order to stay in business.

You can deduct the cost of these repairs on Line 21 of your Schedule C, but you cannot deduct the value of your own labor.

The IRS specifies that “incidental repairs and maintenance” are those that don’t add to the property’s value or appreciably prolong its life. (I take that to mean that repairs, in this case, simply make your equipment operable again.)

Whatever you spend to restore or replace property you must capitalize. You can find the capitalization rules in Publication 538.

Retirement Contributions

Most freelance writers don’t have access to a retirement plan like a 401k through an employer. Paying to set one up doesn’t make sense in most cases.

You can claim certain contributions on Form 1040 and reduce your tax bill.

Here are the specifics:

Contributions to a traditional IRA are tax deductible on both your state and federal tax returns.

You cannot deduct contributions to Roth IRAs. Though you must contribute after-tax dollars, your earnings and withdrawals are generally tax-free.

If you are self-employed, you can set up a retirement plan called a SEP IRA. Think of it as a stand-in for an employee’s 401k designed for business owners. Based on your income, you can contribute up to $53,000 annually (at the time of writing), and you can deduct every dollar.

Double win. You reduce your tax bill while saving for retirement.

Taxes & Licenses

In their great munificence and wisdom, the IRS allows you to not pay tax on tax you paid. (Wrap your mind around that one.)

Unless otherwise noted, most of the taxes listed below you will enter on Line 23 of your Schedule C.

Real Estate Taxes – Good news… You can deduct real estate and personal property taxes on business assets.

State Tax (on Gross Income) – I live in Tennessee where we have no state income tax. But if your state hits you with tax on gross income, then you can write off tax on your gross freelancing income.

Property Tax – This applies only to the property where you conduct business. If you qualify for home office deductions, you can write off a percentage of the property tax you pay on your house. To determine your deductible property tax, multiply what you paid in property tax by the percentage of your home that you use for a home office. For example, if your work space comprises 10% of the total square footage, then you can write off $200 of your $2000 in property taxes. That $200 will convert from personal itemized deductions to business write-offs. You may need to adjust that number if you only had your home office for part of the year. For example, let’s say you started working from home on July 1. You could only claim half of the total deduction: $100. You will record property taxes, along with other expenses for business use of your home, on Form 8829.

Special Licenses & Fees – Most freelancers don’t have to have to maintain special professional licenses in the same way that attorneys and investment advisors do. But if you do pay for annual licenses and regulatory fees to your state and/or local governments, then you can usually deduct these or amortize them.

State & Local Sales Taxes – If you collect sales taxes from your freelancing clients, then you will include the total amount of your gross receipts (or sales) on Line 1 of your Schedule C. You will then deduct total sales tax collected on Line 23.

Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) – Employers must pay a tax called the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) on employee wages. These taxes come straight out of the employer’s pockets, not from an employee’s paycheck. So when you have a freelance writing business, you ARE the employer and the employee. You can deduct FUTA.

State Unemployment/Disability – You can also deduct any contributions to your state’s unemployment insurance fund or disability benefit fund, assuming that state law designates them as taxes.

Self-Employment Tax – You can deduct one half of your self-employment tax (i.e., Social Security & Medicare) on Line 27 of Form 1040.

For example, a $1,000 self-employment tax payment reduces taxable income by $500. In the 25 percent tax bracket, that saves you $125 in income taxes. This deduction is an adjustment to income claimed on Form 1040, and is available whether or not you itemize deductions.

Your legal entity matters in this situation. Though setting up an LLC costs money, an LLC—one taxed as an S Corp and one where you are the sole owner and employee—can lower the amount of self-employment taxes that you owe.

If you were to divide your income between your “base” salary and any extra profit shares, you would pay self-employment tax on your salary but not on the rest of the profits.

(Note: To be taxed as an S Corp, you must file form 2553.)

Phone & Internet

You can deduct the cost of your Internet and phone bills as utility expenses even if, like me, you use the same utilities for business and pleasure. The catch is that you can only write off a percentage.

Estimate the percentage of usage time spent on business activities and then calculate the total write-off.

For example, let’s say you pay $100 a month for your wireless plan and $100 a month for Internet. You spent 75% of your usage on business. $200 times 75% (or .75) comes out to $150 for business utilities each month.

You cannot deduct the first phone line into your residence, only additional costs incurred reasons or a second landline based on the percentage of business use. You include this deduction on Line 25 of your Schedule C.

You include your cell phones expenses on Part 5 (“Other Expenses”) of your Schedule C. You itemize your other expenses there as well and write the total amount on Line 27a of your Schedule C.

Transaction Fees

Unless you’re living in the Stone Age, you use PayPal, Stripe, Shopify, Etsy, or another online payment platform to receive payments. These platforms charge fees to process transactions. You can deduct these fees.

Add them up and include them on Line 27a of your Schedule C.

Travel

Many of my “colleagues” are Internet friends with whom I interact on Facebook, Twitter, and Slack. Meeting up with them in person at conferences always feels like a family reunion.

The smiles and hugs have the added benefit of business travel write-offs, including the cost of conferences themselves, along with airfare, hotel rooms, Uber rides, car rentals, and food. You can even write off dry cleaning, you slouch.

You can deduct all of lodging and mileage expenses for business travel but only the standard 50% for meals, as I explained above.

A long weekend at a Marriott for a two-day freelancing conference probably won’t trigger an audit. But an entire week at a ritzy resort might raise an eyebrow. (The IRS only has one eyebrow.)

It’s fine to build a personal vacation around business travel, but you can only claim the portions of the trip that were truly business related—that is, the length of conference and networking events or time spent doing actual freelance projects.

Of course, one of the appeals of freelancing is how blurry the lines get between work and play. A good rule of thumb is 50%. If you spent half the day learning, meet current or potential clients, and working, then you count that day.

Perhaps this should go without saying, but you can only take travel related deductions if you are—ahem—out of town. Your body must leave the geographic area where you live—also known as, your “tax home”—and you must be gone longer than a day. Going to a conference and back home again in a single day typically doesn’t qualify.

Travel write-offs go on Line 24a on your Schedule C with the exception of meals and entertainment, which go on Line 24b instead. (Reference the Meals & Entertainment section above.)

Unpaid Invoices

I’ve gotten stiffed by a few clients over the years, but less often than you might think. My practice of requiring a non-refundable deposit before I add a project to my production queue has also helped to offset what would have been bigger losses.

Regardless, you can deduct unpaid invoices as long as you first claim them as income. They count as “bad debt” in the eyes of the IRS, and you put the total on Line 6 of Schedule C of Form 1040.

Conclusion

Now that I’ve given you a banging headache, you’re probably ready to collapse into a heap and weep for your mama.

Tax “Home” (State or country where you live and work most of the time)

It’s easy to see how accountants make a full-time job out of this. By the time you read this, chances are, some new law will have gone into effect. Some nuance about how to deduct travel expenses will have changed.

The odds seem stacked against many freelance writers. You either have to invest many hours in navigating these treacherous waters or invest hard-earned dollars in hiring an expert to captain the ship in your stead.

It’s not that I think you couldn’t figure it out. Of course you could.

But consider the the opportunity cost: You only have some many hours in the day.

While you’re trying to keep up with changes in tax law, the cost-benefit analysis of different entity structures, and the actual record-keeping and math for two or three dozen credits and deductions, you could have been building your freelance writing business.

Any time spent on bookkeeping and tax prep is time not spent on the activities that directly generate profit and drive growth.

You already know I recommend hiring an accountant to do your books and a CPA to prepare your tax return. CPAs have to take 40 hours of continuing education each year to stay licensed!

https://austinlchurch.com/freelance-taxes-everything-you-need-to-know/feed/0Reflections on My First Failed Small-Scale Sabbaticalhttps://austinlchurch.com/reflections-on-my-first-failed-small-scale-sabbatical/
https://austinlchurch.com/reflections-on-my-first-failed-small-scale-sabbatical/#commentsMon, 19 Feb 2018 17:13:03 +0000http://austinlchurch.com/?p=2873For all intents and purposes, my first small-scale sabbatical was a failure. But I'm going to learn from it, and next time, I'm going to focus on unproductivity.

Last year at Tribe Conference, I met Sean McCabe, and later, when we reconnected on Skype, Sean introduced me to what he calls “small-scale sabbaticals.” I was intrigued, and I committed to taking off every seventh week in 2018.

You should know I’m not very good at taking time off. I’d be thrilled to kick email out of my life forever, but I enjoy accomplishment. I won’t pretend that enjoyment is entirely pure. There’s probably some streak of compulsion in there somewhere, some need to perform, prove myself, and earn love and admiration.

At the same time, I love to start things, create things, make something out of nothing. I’m always kicking around any number of ideas. Once I finished the design for my Fofi cards and printed them, I moved on to my Medium Challenge, 100 blog posts in 100 days. After I finished my first children’s book Grabbing, I shifted my focus to building a course called Freelancing Fundamentals.

In short, I’ve made a habit of making things.

I also enjoy business. To make people’s lives better with a service or product and to receive money in return—that is an addictive game. It is Monopoly with real money.

In many respects going on vacation feels like turning parts of myself off.

Of course, I could make an argument that going on a hike is accomplishing something. And I could argue that time away, margin, white space, is a reliable (if counterintuitive) way to get clarity about your business problems and opportunities.

Answering an email from an old friend while on vacation should be permissible, yes? Though running is the antithesis of baking on a beach, it should also be permissible if it makes me feel good, right?

Therein lies the rub.

What is a vacation? What is a sabbatical?

For some people going for a run would ruin the mood, and for others like myself it brings peace and perspective.

The beauty of a vacation is thus in the eye of the beholder, but that truth doesn’t make for a very satisfying conclusion.

As I went through the week, I boiled down sabbaticals to one simple rule: prioritizing the people, projects, and pursuits I enjoy for their own sake, and avoiding anything that could be construed as “productivity.”

I failed. Let’s just get that confession over with.

I answered too many emails, and against my better judgment I jumped in to help a couple of clients.

Granted, I had a good attitude about this mode shift, but I knew I was cheating myself of fully unplugging.

My clients wouldn’t have even been upset. I told them I was going to be out of the office, and I had people on call who could stand in for me.

So why did I still jump in when I spent time and strategy preparing my people for my absence?

Habit.

I’ve spent a decade not fully unplugging and not fully unwinding. I suppose there’s a dopamine hit in there somewhere: I get to be on vacation and then step in and be the hero for half an hour and then go back to being on vacation.

Only, it takes several days of uninterrupted unproductivity for me to really relax into it, and every time I don my cape and fly to my inbox, I reset the clock.

What we’re really talking about here is mindspace. What are our minds occupied with? Even answering only a handful of emails can cause us to be preoccupied with the very problems and opportunities from which we hoped to take a break.

In my experience thinking about those situations more, ruminating on them more, doesn’t bring break through.

Did you ever blank out during a test only for the answers that evaded you to spring back into your mind as soon as you walked out of the room? Would sitting longer at your desk, concentrating harder as your anxiety and frustration mounted, have produced the answers?

Probably not.

Frustrated as you might have been with your forgetfulness, you had to leave the room and relinquish control. The bell ringing forced you to hand in your incomplete test and change your environment—that is, go to your next class.

Sure enough, the name of the 37th president came to mind. You curse. Why couldn’t you remember that fact when it really counted?

When you change your mindset and your environment—when the pressure is off, so to speak—you will often get the answers you seek.

By not thinking about some thorny client and by going on a bike ride, you make more “progress.” While you’re off having fun, your heart and mind come back into alignment. Back in the office the next week, you realize that you were being egotistical and that the most expedient remedy is an apology.

Or you realize that fear and a scarcity mindset caused you to hold onto a failing relationship. You need to help your client hire your replacement.

You don’t get these bursts of clarity or the confidence that comes from it if you’re chained to your inbox.

You must commit to unproductivity.

Unproductivity is the unstrategy that can help you achieve unusual breakthrough in your life and business.

For a decade I’ve been out of the habit of truly unplugging. It’s no coincidence that Ash Wednesday happened during my first small-scale sabbatical.

This year, I am giving up anxiety for Lent.

The opposite of an irrational fear of bad things that might happen is a proactive faith that good things will happen.

The most tangible symbol of that faith is taking a true vacation and effectively entrusting your business, your dreams, and your finances to a good God: “I know you will take care of this while I’m gone. In fact, you’re better qualified than I am.”

Yes, I have passion for my work, but that passion isn’t to blame for my not taking time off. No, the leaky faucet of anxiety at the back of my mind is what compels me to open my inbox, to check in quickly.

Trees don’t produce fruit by striving, and we don’t give birth to our most significant dreams by running pellmell from one task to the next.

When my next sabbatical starts six weeks from now, I’m going to delete the mail app from my phone. I’m going to leave my MacBook at my office.

If I want to write, I’ll use my iPad Pro.

(I never set up email on it and bought a keyboard for it so that I could use it for writing while on vacation! But did I use it last week? No.)

One of the differences between fruitfulness and productivity is the quiet joy that you can experience when you live in the present moment. Crushing through your to-do list may give you a grim satisfaction, but that productivity defined by speed and volume cannot give you the childlike, effervescent love of the now.

Next time, I will be more childlike, and I won’t be surprised when really shrewd business ideas come to mind, unbidden, like butterflies. They’ll have to wait until the week is out though.

]]>https://austinlchurch.com/reflections-on-my-first-failed-small-scale-sabbatical/feed/4Why I’m Using Quizzes for Lead Generationhttps://austinlchurch.com/quizzes-for-lead-generation/
https://austinlchurch.com/quizzes-for-lead-generation/#commentsThu, 09 Nov 2017 16:41:25 +0000http://austinlchurch.com/?p=2864One of my most popular blog posts is a 5,990 word behemoth on a very specific topic: how to create a freelance writer website that actually gets clients. I got the SEO right on this post, and depending on the day, it ranks either #1 or #3 for the target keyword. As a result, the

I got the SEO right on this post, and depending on the day, it ranks either #1 or #3 for the target keyword. As a result, the post gets a significant amount of organic traffic.

This particular post became the poster child of authoritative blog posts: going deep and long, giving away all my secrets and providing real value, providing the type of resource that I needed as a brand new freelance writer back in 2009.

But I noticed a problem.

I want to grow my email list, but my epic blog post wasn’t converting much of that free traffic.

Google Analytics tells me that visitors spend, on average, over six minutes reading the blog post.

Not bad!

I had used Beacon to convert the post into a PDF, and my lead magnet was that PDF: “Don’t have time to finish reading the post right now? Share your name and email address, and I’ll send you the download link for the PDF version.”

ConvertKit revealed just how unappealing that PDF was…

Visitors opted in at an abysmal rate of 0.3%. Ouch.

I listened to Episode 278 of Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast, and his guest, Amy Porterfield, had some helpful thoughts on lead magnets and content upgrades. Here my paraphrased version of Amy’s rationale:

“Nowadays, because it’s so congested online, you’ve got to have really good content and add value at a higher level than ever before in order to stand out. In order to get people on your email list, you must offer incentive in the form of amazing content upgrades—cheat sheets, checklists, and other freebies that are downloadable in exchange for an email address.”

Then, Amy got to the kicker:

“You want to give them just a taste and inspire them: ‘I can do this.’ Give them that quick win. People make their freebie so meaty and it takes so long for somebody to get through it that they never come out of that rabbit hole and say, ‘Okay. Now, I’m ready to buy.’”

I made two changes.

I condensed the post into a cheatsheet.

I added this call-to-action at the very end of the introduction:

“Note: At 5,800 words this article is chock full of good advice. Be that as it may, some of you may want to skip the TL;DR version and use the cheatsheet instead. Put in your name and email address, and I’ll send you the download link.”

Those two changes tripled my conversions.

0.9% still isn’t very good. I plan to experiment with several other content upgrades.

But this whole experience has given me a crash course in list-building. Digital marketing is a school of hard knocks. The secret that no one wants to tell you is that you have to get out there and do a ton of experiments and make a ton of mistakes.

You will miss out on a ton of qualified leads because your marketing funnel has leaks in it. But you won’t identify the leaks if you try to perfect your funnel before pushing it out into the world.

A better approach is to launch the imperfect, leaky funnel (or blog post or product) and then use the data, analytics, and customers feedback (or lack thereof) to iterate quickly.

I usually have to learn my lessons the hard way, but I am learning them:

By all means produce long, deep, authoritative content.

Pay attention to your analytics.

Don’t expend all of your energy on that article and skimp in the content upgrade department

The best content upgrades are highly contextual. Your readers can implement these questions, templates, checklists, and cheatsheets in 15 minutes. They can implement what you just taught them quickly.

Not only will contextual content upgrades get your more subscribers, but they will also gain your readers’ trust.

If your lead magnets and content upgrades are so dense and meaty that people never get around to actually using them, then you haven’t given your readers a quick win.

That’s the irony: Substantial lead magnets don’t give people what they want—that is, quick results. We all have a “To Read” folder where we keep the stuff we download and plan to read on a slow, rainy day that never comes.

We don’t read and implement.

We never reap the benefits.

We don’t attribute that momentum to the expert.

The existence of all those unloved PDFs in that oft-neglected folder creates cognitive dissonance. The next time you start to download some comprehensive, 60-page knowledge bomb on how to supercharge your content marketing, you might second-guess yourself: “Am I ever going to read this?”

Why do these contextual content upgrades work?

You can’t solve a problem people don’t think they have. You have to illuminate the problem first and explain the benefits, the better life, available if your readers will take action.

So you might say that the article delivers the diagnosis, and the content upgrade delivers the treatment.

In his book DotCom Secrets Russell Brunson describes the same concept as “pre-frame bridge.” A pre-frame bridge ensures that your readers or prospects are in the right mindset to take the next step. They believe that they have a problem, and they believe that you can deliver the treatment.

While people are reading your content, they’re at different stages in their businesses. They may also vary widely in what they believe about the same problem:

Then, you can figure out which content upgrades can move them forward in 15 minutes.

Now I’m experimenting with quizzes…

The need to help people recognize the real problem is why quizzes can work so well as lead-generation tools.

Asking good questions forces people to question their assumptions. Once you politely shove those assumptions aside, you can introduce a new idea or, to stick with the medical analogy, effective treatment.

Quizzes give quick results. People love quick results.

This month, I have begun experimenting with the Interact quiz platform (affiliate link). So far, I am really impressed.

Here is the first quiz I created…

Have you ever used a quiz for lead generation? I’d love to hear about your experience in a comment below.

]]>https://austinlchurch.com/quizzes-for-lead-generation/feed/2Review of Overlap by Sean McCabehttps://austinlchurch.com/review-overlap-sean-mccabe/
https://austinlchurch.com/review-overlap-sean-mccabe/#commentsThu, 14 Sep 2017 14:44:23 +0000http://austinlchurch.com/?p=2846Here's my review of Overlap by Sean McCabe. The book surprised me. I was expecting a fluff sandwich, but McCabe shares a lot of solid advice.

Sean McCabe’s new book Overlap surprised me. When I picked it up, I expected a fluff sandwich.

That’s not a statement about Sean, the quality of his thinking and writing, or his authority in the online business space. To be honest, I didn’t know Sean or the seanwes brand well before Overlap popped up on my radar.

It’s just that I have read so many books the “business lite” category, and more often than not, the author could have communicated the core message—a single idea that changed the author’s life—in 20 pages instead of 200.

Even if the other 180 pages contain well-told stories, convincing case studies, and the requisite helping of research, factoids, and trivia, you can read only the Introduction and Conclusion and miss very little.

My Issue with Fluff Sandwiches

I get it. You don’t get a book deal with a 20-page manuscript, so authors must produce the rest of the manuscript like a rabbit from a hat.

This fluff sandwich format—Introduction, fluff, Conclusion—may actually be helpful. I haven’t read any research, but human beings do benefit from repetition. In order to absorb certain lessons, we must learn them again and again.

Math homework, anyone?

With that said, thousands of classics already line the physical and digital shelves, and hundreds more worthwhile reads hit them each year. We must invest our reading time wisely.

Overlap is not a fluff sandwich.

Let me repeat, Sean McCabe’s new book Overlap surprised me, and I recommend that you buy and read it (affiliate link).

McCabe has a knack for producing hard, practical observations. The book is a bag of gems, and despite what you may intuit from the subtitle, “Start a Business While Working a Full-Time Job,” Overlap is as much a primer on healthy habits as it is a manual for starting your side hustle.

As a recovering perfectionist, I love me some habits. I love taking control, and I love people who will give it to me straight. We all need friends and mentors who strip us of our excuses.

We all people to encourage us to find the most satisfying type of work for us, which typographer Jessica Hische describes this way: “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”

Read Overlap if you’re still trying to gain clarity around your passion.

But what if you don’t know what you want to do? What if you haven’t yet grabbed your one enduring, all-consuming passion by the tail? Or what if you have more than one?

That’s where Overlap really shines. Sean makes a strong case that you should start before you have perfect clarity.

The discovery of the work you will find most fulfilling is a process, a process of elimination even, and as such, the sooner you kickstart the process, the sooner you’ll zero in on your passion.

Last year I wrote a post called “Screw Your Passion. Get a Job.” It highlights a common problem, especially among Millennials: Afraid of committing to the wrong thing or missing out on a better thing, we don’t commit to anything.

McCabe’s advice? Commit. Take responsibility:

“The first thing you need to do is take ownership of your situation. Don’t shirk responsibility; take responsibility. Seek responsibility. If you want to continue to feel helpless and overwhelmed, then blame everyone and everything else and make excuses for why you don’t have time. If you want to be free, gain control of your life, and get your time back, you have to take responsibility.” (116)

7 Key Takeaways from Overlap

But Sean McCade doesn’t just tell you what to do; he tells you how to do it. You will find actionable advice on every page.

In fact, I highlighted so many ideas and passages that I had to take a step back, and ask, “What can I share that will leave people feeling intrigued and not overwhelmed?”I restrict myself to these seven takeaways:

Respect for your work starts with you. If people keep interrupting you while you’re working on your side hustle, you are not the victim. Rather, you have not communicated clearly what you’re about and worked toward alignment with your partner and children, family and friends.

Get a day job that doesn’t cannibalize your creative energy. I love that McCabe strongly recommends a day job—at least in the early years. At the same time he advises against trying to find overlap between your day job and your passion: “If you spend the same kind of energy at your day job, you become more invested, even though the freedom is not there.” (68) Also, beware of “golden handcuffs.” Unforeseen or undesired successes can shackle us to a job or position we ultimately want to leave.

Avoid monetizing your passion too soon. McCabe takes issue with the “You have to go all-in to succeed” way of thinking about passion projects and side hustles. He shares this story about James: “James didn’t have a plan. He quickly learned that you can’t sustain yourself on the fumes of passion. Working for himself, he thought he would be free to choose any job he wanted. Instead, he fell slave to desperation, taking on whatever projects he could get. This gave way to scarcity. Instead of joy, he associated thoughts about art with pain and misery. James had burned out his passion.” (64) As you work on side projects and gain clarity about the work you really should be doing, don’t turn worry about the money. Rely on your day job to pay your bills

Get up early. This section hit me between the eyes. I am the King of squeezing more work in from 8-12pm to catch-up after a hectic day. After I get my brain wound up again, it takes me longer to fall asleep. I then sleep late. McCabe rationalized his choices in a similar way until he staged an experiment. He decided to get up early for several weeks just to see what would happen to his writing output. He more than doubled his daily word count, and that increased productivity, not his enjoyment of getting up early, is what ultimately convinced him to shift his working hours. This quote sums up the cumulative effect of better habits: “I don’t do it because I enjoy it. I do it because I like who I am when I do.” (144)

Show up. We have a letter board in our kitchen, and earlier this year, my wife Megan put up this message: No Grit No Pearl.” That could be the thesis of Overlap. Adversity will show up, so you must commit to showing up even when the work isn’t fun. Or, to put it another way, if your commitment to your side hustle is costing you something, then you are most likely on the right track. McCabe says it in this way on page 156:

“Show up every day.
• Show up when it hurts.
• Show up when you’re tired.
• Show up when you’re not feeling it.
• Show up when it’s early.
• Show up when it’s late.
• Show up when everyone else is giving up.
• Show up when it’s the first day.
• Show up when it’s the 731st day.”

Carve out 90-minute blocks. Contrary to what we might believe, we don’t need more time. We need more focus. To really get into the flow, you need to set aside at least ninety minutes. “The top 10 percent of productive employees don’t work any longer than anyone else. They enter into deep periods of focus ranging from fifty to ninety minutes and alternate with short breaks in between those periods. If you can manage to construct even a single ninety-minute block of uninterrupted focus, you can accomplish more than what most people do in an eight-hour day. If you can schedule multiple ninety-minute blocks of focus in a day, separated by breaks, you’ll be much further ahead.” (123)

Be patient. “Great work takes time. Masterpieces are the product of relentless pursuit and consistent action over time. You have to do something a lot—sometimes a thousand or ten thousand times to create a single masterpiece. Of the five hundred most popular symphonies ever made, 497 were completed after the composer’s tenth year of work. Your best work is ahead. Be excited and press on.” (157-158)

Do you notice how ordinary all of those takeaways are?

That’s a good thing.

Imagine the best possible grandpa, the archetype of all grandpas. He’s got a pipe in his mouth. He’s got on a flannel shirt that he’s owned for years—“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”—and he’s helping you fix your car.

As you work side by side, he asks you questions about your life and work, and as he listens, patiently, to your meandering answers, he asks questions and makes observations. His words have the weight of wisdom that isn’t trying to impress anymore than a screwdriver or wrench tries to impress.

Grandpa says things like this:

Sounds like you may need to get up early.

Just keep showing up. The rest will take care of itself.

Be patient.

Grandpas have done a lot of life, and they have seen the fads come and go. Through the sifting of the decades, they observed what habits and attitudes stood the test of time, what worked and what didn’t.

Grandpas are bags of gems. Grandpas know nothing about growth hacking. Isn’t that why we trust their advice?

Sean McCabe is still relatively young, so comparing Overlap to a grandpa might seem odd. Forget about the grandpa, and remember this instead: Sean McCabe’s advice seems old, which is to say timeless.

Maybe your product does go viral on Product Hunt. Maybe your YouTube video does get 1,000,000 plays in 24 hours. Maybe you do leverage growth hacking. Maybe you become a true overnight success.

What then? You’ll still need to show up every single day and put in the work. You’ll also still need time to tinker and play and dream.

Speaking of margin, I’ll end with one final quote: “If you’re ever going to have margin, you need to schedule it on your calendar and treat it as seriously as you do any commitment.” (117)

I’m not looking for a new side hustle. With my first children’s book Grabbling and SPACE Retreats and travel hacking, I’ve got enough. And I don’t need more clarity around my passion or calling. I was put here on this earth to write and change the world with my words. Yet, Overlap delivered many timely reminders and caused me to recommit to some habits on which I had loosened my grip.

If you have a 9-to-5 job but want to start something new on the side, then this book is definitely for you.

Buy Overlap (affiliate link). Read it cover to cover. Take notes and formulate your plan. Then, show up, and keep showing up. Eventually, your passion will take shape, and your work will become very fulfilling indeed.

Awhile back, my friend Amy asked me to capture my thoughts on writing better web content by writing a guide. Though I haven’t gotten around to it yet, I do have preferences, strong preferences even. But what would the world writing be without misanthropes and curmudgeons?

When I write on behalf of clients, I follow certain guidelines. These guidelines aren’t incontrovertible dictates etched into stone tablets. My preferences aren’t that strong. No, I follow guidelines because, otherwise, my own desire to gambol about with words can work to a client’s detriment.

Going from a graduate creative writing program to a marketing firm required that I forget much of what I had just learned. The reason being, many of the rules and techniques at play in poetry or fiction—the dimensions of what makes good writing good in those genres—were either absent or dramatically altered in a business context.

What makes good fiction good would make a very bad poem indeed, and what makes a good poem good would make bad ad copy.

You will certainly find (and need) good storytelling and a well-turned phrase or two in your sales copy. You may find a lyrical quality in a strong headline or even a light sprinkling of rhyme and repetition in a product description. But most bets are off.

The goal of web content is to educate and persuade.

Instead of showcasing the writer’s style or virtuosic skill, instead of transporting the reader to a new world or couching a moral inside of a fairy tale, the words in an ad have a clear job to do. They must sell.

If the ad doesn’t sell, the ad fails.

Of course, as I already mentioned, effective sales copy may still have a pronounced sense of play or take advantage of the musicality of syllables, words, and phrases. But if the beauty of the craftsmanship gets in the way of selling effectively, then the piece fails. The writing fails because of its beauty.

We writers can be very selfish in that respect. We’re more interested in having fun and enjoying the work than truly serving our clients’ needs.

Surely some purists out there will declaim, “The web copy failed to convert? Good! And good riddance to marketing and advertising. That’s what writers get when they bastardize their talent in service of Mammon.”

Let me say that an elitist point-of-view—about worthy and unworthy uses of writing and art—almost always coexists with envy and jealousy aimed at writers who aren’t starving. If you are employing your ability to assemble words to earn a comfortable livelihood, then you are, by definition, a turncoat.

The art-versus-commerce conversation sets up a false dichotomy. We all need money to live. We honor no one by beggaring ourselves when we could earn a surplus and give it away. If God has put you in a position to support yourself while also enjoying your work, then support yourself and enjoy your work. Leave your critics and their paper-thin purity to the birds.

With that unpleasantness behind us, let’s return to the business at hand.

What are the attributes of strong web content anyway?

How do you know if you are headed in the right (or write) direction? VisibleThread is a software company that helps large organizations monitor content quality. They used Ad Age’s data to make a list of 162 of the top 200 national advertisers, based on spending. Then, they used their software to crawl those companies’ websites and scan at least 1,000 words of content. Then, with the help of their Clarity Index methodology, VisibleThread graded each company’s content on four international norms or standards:

Readability – How intelligible is the content?

Passive Language – What proportion of the sentences use passive voice?

Long Sentences – What proportion of the sentences are long?

Word Complexity Density – What percentage of the words are complex or “dense” relative to the total word count?

Okay. What does VisibleThread’s report have to do with freelance writers?

Secondly, over half of this spend (54.7% ) happened in the digital space. These companies spend billions to drive traffic to their websites.

Does the quality of a company’s website content matter? Of course it does. Companies want (and need) to see a return on investment for their advertising spend, yet many of them, even the biggest ones, self-sabotage with crappy web content.

To put it another way, it’s hard to effectively convert visitors into prospects, and prospects into paying customers, with writing that is confusing. It’s hard to win a beauty pageant with a black eye.

The VisibleThread report shared another important insight: clear, straightforward content is even more important for companies that sell services (rather than tangible goods). Most people inherently understand the value of a charcoal grill, soft toilet paper, and cheap contact lenses, but they often need help understanding the benefits and relative value of different services. Should you sign up for Dish Network or cable? Why is one bank’s checking account better than the next?

VisibleThread has demonstrated that most providers of most services get low scores in the clarity department. Those prospects who decline to hire you because they are going to write it themselves? Even if they are otherwise competent writers, they are more likely to write crappy content than good content.

Why? Because they’re writing to sound smart and important instead of writing for clarity. They don’t have enough writing expertise to know that strong web content is counterintuitive: A smart writer communicates in clear terms that a middle school could understand and thereby increases the likelihood of an an adult or business owner 1) understanding and 2) taking action.

Whether we freelance writers like it or not, the web isn’t the place for long words, longer sentences, and complex paragraphs crammed with grammatical flourishes and whizzbangs. Here is the best rule of thumb for writing effective web content…

If you want to write better web content, dumb it down.

Even writing that makes me wince. Yet, it’s hard to deny that short sentences populated with simple, quickly intelligible words are easier to understand and therefore better able to sell a product or service.

Sentence Construction (“Syntax”) – Long sentences with multiple concepts are harder to comprehend. Splitting them up into shorter sentences—say, one for each concept—will bring clarity.

Verb Voice – Sentences with passive verbs put the subject acted upon before the verb—for example, “Quality is monitored.” Sentences with active verbs do the opposite: “We monitor quality.” Active voice makes the “actor” (We) and the action (“monitored”) crystal clear. Active verbs also increase the strength of the sentence by cutting out unnecessary words like “is” (in the first example), which doesn’t add meaning and dilutes the sentence as a whole.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

If you want to see examples of content to which VisibleThread gave high clarity scores, then check out some of the winners:

Dish Network won the top prize on VisibleThread’s Clear Writing index.

Expedia.com ranked #2 overall and had the highest readability score.

Mattel ranked #1 for having low usage of passive voice and relatively few long sentences. Mattel sells toys, so their target audience is children. Whoever wrote their content must have kept that in mind because only 1% of their content has long sentences. By comparison, 27% of Hasbro’s content contains long sentences. Oops.

Examples of Weak Web Content

This example from Merck’s website will show you what not to do:

“Moderna Therapeutics today announced a license and collaboration agreement with Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, through a subsidiary, for the discovery and development of vaccines and passive immunity treatments against viral diseases using modified messenger RNA (mRNA).”

Merck’s products are certainly more complex than Mattel’s, yet can they really make a case for the effectiveness of long sentences? No. They wouldn’t have the data to back it up.

And can you imagine the impact of a pharmaceuticals website with easy-to-read content? Doctors and consumers would rejoice.

“No one has ever been turned off by a website because it is far too easy to read.”

(Ironically, an active verb would make that sentence stronger: “An easy to read website has never turned anyone off.” Even experts make mistakes! To be fair, I have probably ignored the advice I give in my post on how to write good web content.)

Before we say goodbye…

Here’s the copy in case it’s hard to read on your screen: “We operationalize signature strategies across touchpoints that reveal a distinct people-centric approach to service that are experienced and persuasive.”

It’s so bad it’s good! I think that marketing agency has since gone out of business.

2) Former President Barack Obama signed the Plain Writing Act of 2010 on October 13, 2010. Unfortunately, most of the U.S. government’s websites are so unreadable they actually break that law.

]]>https://austinlchurch.com/4-ways-to-write-better-web-content/feed/2How to Ask for Referrals & Get Repeat Businesshttps://austinlchurch.com/how-to-ask-for-referrals/
https://austinlchurch.com/how-to-ask-for-referrals/#commentsFri, 01 Sep 2017 14:59:21 +0000http://austinlchurch.com/?p=2812Asking for new projects and introductions can be tricky. Here's how to get referrals: create email templates and remember ask to use them.

I’m going to assume that you want more business. I know I didn’t wake up this morning thinking, “Can’t wait for Wunderbar to wither and die!”

Of course, not all new business is the same. Some dollars take more time to earn than others. For example, any of the following might be true for you:

“I need more freelancing clients.”

“I need more repeat business.”

“I need more referrals.”

“I need better profits. I need to spend less to get new business.”

Yet, the easiest (and best, I think) way to grow your business is with repeat business and referrals.

Here’s the kicker: You usually have to ask for both.

Asking for new projects and introductions to new prospects can be uncomfortable. You don’t want to come across as desperate or needy. You don’t want to send the wrong signal to your loyal clients and make them think, “The only time I hear from this guy is when he needs something from me.”

Discomfort is one reason we don’t ask for repeat business and referrals, but the puzzle has more pieces:

We forget to ask.

We don’t make time to find the right words—language that fits our personalities and particular brand of professionalism.

We beat around the bush and don’t make it exceedingly clear what we want people to do for us.

By the time I get in touch, the relationship is a bit stale. Of course, reconnecting is as simple as saying, “Hi Louis, I was thinking about you. Is everything still good with your website?” But if I only check in every nine months, I will miss out on opportunities.

You have to stay in touch to stay top of mind, and you can find artful ways to follow up, create value, and stay top of mind. For example, you can send emails like this: “Hi Daniel, I was thinking about you this morning. Awhile back, we talked about referrals, and I just wrote a blog post about that. Here is the link…Hope all is well!”

Use a CRM.

If you’ve ever emailed a past client at just the right time and gotten a new writing project with almost no effort, then you have experienced firsthand the addictive nature of repeat business.

Yes, more of that please. (CRM enters, stage right.)

I’ve been using a free Highrise account for a couple of years now. It’s not the most robust tool. It’s not the prettiest tool. But Highrise has the single feature that I need: quickly adding contacts or automating reminders.

That’s the ugly truth of tech and tools: If you pick a beautiful free tool that is hard to use, you will stop using it. The tool ends up having no value for you and may be expensive in the sense that you miss opportunities because of it.

On the other hand, an ugly but easy-to-use tool that costs money may end up being less expensive than a free tool if it creates opportunities.

In short, pick tools that remove friction, regardless of whether they will win a beauty contest.

If you can’t help yourself and must explore various CRM options, then check out Pipedrive and Airtable.

Create templates.

If you find request a referral and you actually get one, then turn that email into a template. Keep using it.

Once I develop templates, I paste them into aText, which is similar to Text Expander but a fraction of the price, and assign a code to each one of them—for example “.referralrequest.”

Then, when my CRM sends me an automated reminder, all I have to do is open a new email, type .referralrequest, and Voila! My template populates in the email body. I can quickly customize it and click send.

I trust these templates. They work. They have gotten me new business without weirding out my clients and other people in my network.

That’s about it. Sorry if you expected some fancy growth hacking trick with an extra dusting of fairy magic. I’m old-fashioned, and I like to grow my business with strategies that will still work ten years from now.

Straight up asking for repeat business and referrals works now. It has always worked. It will always work even if my 3D avatar—a tabby cat in an astronaut suit, naturally—is chatting up your 3D avatar in a virtual reality in another universe in 2052.

Photo Credit: Sticker Mule via Unsplash

Here’s your homework.

Pick an easy-to-use CRM. Paid or free doesn’t matter as long as you keep using it, and it thus generates ROI.

Add your past clients as contacts.

Set up and automate follow-up reminders. (Note: I follow up every six weeks.)

Write a repeat business request template. One of those is also included in the freebie.

Rewrite the templates to make them sound like you.

Ask a client to read them and highlight any weirdness.

Start asking for referrals and repeat business.

Rule of Thumb: As you kickstart this process, treat other people the way you want to be treated.

Here’s an example of an email I sent in October 2016…

Closing Remarks

It’s fine to ask for more business. People do it all the time! You don’t have to be super clever and find an angle. You don’t have to make a splashy announcement your latest award or cutting-age, Elon Musk-approved thingamabobber.

You can simply ask, straight up, to be introduced to people your client thinks you can help.

Always default to being polite and to-the-point, and you’ll be surprised at how many people are willing to help you. In fact, a study that came out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that most of us downplay what others know and underestimate their willingness to help. So if you need help in the form of referrals and repeat business, just ask.

Do you want the email templates I use?

If you want my four templates and the cheatsheet that explains how to use them, then enter your name and email address below.

]]>https://austinlchurch.com/how-to-ask-for-referrals/feed/2How to Land Your Next Freelance Writing Jobhttps://austinlchurch.com/how-to-land-your-next-freelance-writing-job/
https://austinlchurch.com/how-to-land-your-next-freelance-writing-job/#respondMon, 28 Aug 2017 16:05:23 +0000http://austinlchurch.com/?p=2797Follow these 10 steps to land your next freelance writing job, and remember that your freelance writing business won't be built in a day.

The demand for writers is obvious to anyone who drives down the street and sees a thousand signs, billboards, and storefronts.

Our main problem as freelance writers is thus not a lack of demand for our services but a propensity for overcomplicating this thing called “Business.”

Business is simple. If you have one client, you are “in business.” The rest is lather, rinse, repeat. Admittedly, managing and growing your business involves a learning curve. So did driving a car at sixteen. So does cooking chicken tikka masala.

Setting up your legal entity and preparing your taxes may make your head hurt and your eyes go crossed, but if you can drive a car and cook a palatable tikka masala, then you can figure out Business.

Perhaps this metaphor will help you: The business of freelancing is a scavenger hunt. You must follow the clues to locate the prize. Only the people who persist find the prize, which in this case is getting paid to write.

How long will you keep trying before you give up?

Persistence is the rather boring secret to success. Stick with freelance writing long enough, and odds are, you’ll accumulate enough clients to make it a full-time gig.

Each client is a building block, and as you focus on the next one, start with the individuals and business owners you already know. Someone you know needs a writer right now. So look for clues.

Which of your friends, family, and acquaintances are looking for new jobs? You could brush up their resumes and either create or refine their LinkedIn profiles.

Who is starting a new business or launching a new product or service? Scan their social feeds. People often drop hints that they need a writer.

Which businesses and companies show up in your inbox? Better yet, which ones only pop up every once in awhile? Inconsistent email marketing is a potential feast for the hungry freelance writer.

Most people want to stay consistent with digital marketing tactics—social posting, email marketing, and blogging—but other tasks and responsibilities eat up their time and attention.

Assume that people need what you have to offer, but that the onus is on you to help potential clients articulate that need.

Someone you know needs a writer right now. What are you going to do about it?

10 Steps to Your Next Freelance Writing Project

1. Set a goal. How many new clients do you need? 5? Not all prospects will become clients, so how many new prospects do you need? 20? Start with 20. If you’re able to sell a project to more than 25% of your prospects, then kudos. Better to oversell and farm out work to other freelance writers than to undersell. In fact, overselling and farming out the surplus is the counterintuitive way to grow your writing business.

2. Think back on recent conversations. Did anyone express interest in working for you? Did you send out quotes and forget to follow up? Have you failed to keep in touch with any past clients? Add all those prospects to your list.

3. Next, cruise your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn feeds. What clues you can find? Writing is the grease that makes the business machine work smoothly. All business owners need writing.

4. Peruse your inbox. Which companies you like are clearly active with email marketing? Which ones have great content? Which ones have forgettable or cringeworthy content? Companies that send emails consistently value high-quality content. It’s usually easier to sell to clients who already place high value on what you do. As for the companies with weak content, they are probably aware of the quality gap. Get in touch. Tell them you love what they do, and you’d like to get involved with their email marketing.

5. Keep track of clues and update your list of prospects as you go.

6. Reach out to each of your prospects. “I noticed on Facebook that you just opened a new location. Congratulations! Your announcement caught my eye because I’m a freelance writer. I help business owners like you with web content, email newsletters, blog posts, social posts, advertisements, and lots of other stuff. Let’s talk about which bits and pieces of writing might be holding you up. Maybe I can help you by squaring away some of those details. Does anything come to mind?”

7. Keep track of these prospects and conversations in a Google Sheet or in a free Highrise account.

9. Post regular updates on social media. I recommend at least two types of posts:

A) Educational (e.g., “Here’s what I have been learning about freelance writing… ”); and

B) Promotional (e.g., “Here are the things that I write for clients… Do you have a need for any of those?”)

Word to the wise: Make at least nine educational posts for every one promotional post.

10. Keep following up every six weeks to three months. Your freelance writing business won’t be built in a day.

Follow up to stay top of mind.

Most people whom you already know won’t need or buy your writing services right away. Why not? Because they haven’t yet recognized the need, and they’re not shopping. Though many people need a writer, they don’t walk around thinking, “I need a writer.”

Human beings are strange creatures. We often misdiagnose our own problems, and we sometimes have to venture deep into a desert before we recognize dehydration.

Your would-be clients know how to write, and they plan on getting around to that new web content eventually. Unfortunately, higher priority tasks keep pushing “write new company page” down their to-do lists.

When you first reach out, most people will say, “Thanks for getting in touch. I don’t need any help.”

But when you reply two months later on the same email thread, you force them to recognize their own lack of initiative:

“Hi Dave, I’m just checking in. How is that new web content coming along?”

Maybe Dave has finished them, but more often than not, he has done nothing.

Without aggravating Dave, you can gently but firmly point his attention to a reality he’d rather ignore: He has unfinished writing projects. They have been in his queue for awhile. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone else made that problem disappear?

Someone you know needs a writer right now, but that the onus is on you to help potential clients articulate that need.

“I know you said you didn’t need any help, but if you’re busy with other responsibilities and higher priorities, I’d be happy to step in and knock out those pieces of writing this week.”

Let me address an elephant in the room. Many freelance writers feel weird about asking friends, family, and acquaintances for work. After all, we have to see these people at church and dinner parties; at Christmas and at the local coffeeshop.

With that said, they’re also the people who know, like, and trust us. They are the people most likely to hire us!

So I encourage you to treat the personal network you already have as your potential client base and referral network. Go get in the way of opportunity, and stay top of mind.

That way, when friends, family, and acquaintances need a freelance writer, you will be the first person that comes to mind.

The June 2016 post resulted in… nada. The June 2017 post got me a small $750 project that involved updating a guy’s resume.

The reason I think the 2017 post is better is because I mention specific problems that my skills solve. In fact, I made a video about that.

If you find an email template that works, keep using it!

Earlier I mentioned a freebie. I doubt I have to convince you that follow-up is important. If you’ve ever emailed a past client at just the right time and gotten a new writing project with almost no effort, then you have experienced firsthand the addictive nature of repeat business.

So why don’t more freelance writers get more repeat business and referrals?

Because they either forget to ask or they don’t know how to ask without coming across as tacky or needy.

We don’t want to ask for too much too often, so we ask for too little too late.

For me the solution was developing the right tactful language that is consistent with my idea of professionalism. I now feel comfortable asking because I trust these templates. They work. They have gotten me new business without weirding out my clients and other people in my network.

One last piece of advice: Always look for ways to simplify your business. If you find an email template that works, keep using it! Someone you know needs a writer right now. The trick is getting in front of that person.

If you want my four templates and the cheatsheet that explains how to use them, then enter your name and email address below. I’ll email you the download link.

]]>https://austinlchurch.com/how-to-land-your-next-freelance-writing-job/feed/010 Surefire Ways to Screw Up Your Freelance Writing Projecthttps://austinlchurch.com/screw-up-your-freelance-writing-project/
https://austinlchurch.com/screw-up-your-freelance-writing-project/#respondFri, 25 Aug 2017 01:48:43 +0000http://austinlchurch.com/?p=2789I hope you’ll learn from my mistakes and use this article as a play-by-play of 10 things to not do with your freelance writing project.

Stories of intrigue and romance. Stories of great courage and swashbuckling advantage. Sorry… I got this blog confused with my dating blog. These stories are about how my ignorance, impatience, or indignation caused me to screw up freelance writing projects and hurt client relationships.

I hope you’ll learn from my mistakes and use this article as a play-by-play of what not to do with your freelance writing projects.

Photo Credit: Michal Grosicki

Mistake #1 – Don’t require a deposit.

Maybe you’re familiar with the following sequence of events:

You complete a project, down to every last jot and tittle.

You invoice the client.

You wait.

Nada.

You send a polite followup. “Hey, just checking in to make sure you received my invoice.”
The client responds, “Yes, we got it. We’ll process it shortly.”

“Oh, good,” you think.

More time passes, and your anxiety mounts. Where is the payment? They have the payment link right there. They could click through and be done with it in two minutes flat. What’s the deal?

My mentor Bruce says that money makes people stupid. Money has certainly made me stupid. Back in the days when I didn’t require a deposit, I would paint myself into a corner.

Desperation stinks, and people can smell it on you. Without the cash reserves to tide me over, I would become desperate for money. I would turn up the pressure on situations where clients were slow to pay.

The fact is, certain clients will conveniently forgot to keep up their end of the bargain—i.e., pay me on time—and they will rationalize this self-serving behavior

in two dozen ways.

But as soon as you bulldoze right through the required patience and business etiquette and start asking for your money too often or even making demands, you make things WEIRD.

Clients don’t like demands. Really, none of us do.

Even if you’re in the right, and they do owe you, and they didn’t pay you on time, they can and will spin an alternate story about you, consciously or unconsciously. The next time they need a freelance writer, they won’t hire you.

The best way to avoid these awkward conversations and to avoid losing a client is to establish clear boundaries from Day 1.

Don’t start on the project until the client has paid a non-refundable deposit.

This requirement seems so obvious to me now. Wunderbar LLC is a pay-to-play business. No one on my team works for free, and as the owner, I don’t offer “work advances.” If clients want me to make their projects a priority, then they pay the first invoice. Then, I add the project to Wunderbar’s production queue.

An added benefit of this pay-to-play model is that I avoid most (not all) complications down the road, such as no-pay scenarios. Were the client to go incommunicado later, at least I keep the 50% deposit and break even, more or less.

Deposits help to keep both parties on their best behavior. I get paid, so I start working. The client has skin in the game and wants to finish the project and see ROI.

Further Reading: I have written at length about non-refundable deposits for freelancers. You’ll benefit from reading that post.

Mistake #2 – Don’t use a rock-solid contract.

I hate legalese almost as much as Excel spreadsheets and waiting in line at the post office. But like deposits, contracts help people to be on their best behavior.

Your contract can be the bad guy so that you don’t have to.

For example, let’s say a client asks for revisions beyond the number included in your quote and tries to blow scope.

The vast majority of clients aren’t trying to pull one over on you. Most of them either didn’t the contract closely, or they haven’t kept track of the number of revisions already requested.

It is thus your responsibility to remind your clients, in a matter-of-fact manner, that the contract includes two rounds of revisions. The client has already requested two. Does she want you to open a new invoice? Or would she prefer to move forward with the existing drafts?

You offer two choices, and neither is the I-do-free-work-because-you’re-requesting-nitpicky-changes option.

Sticking to the terms of the agreement doesn’t mean that you’re stingy. Like everybody else, you have limited time in which to make a living.

Freelance writing isn’t a blank check in terms of unlimited edits/tweaks/revisions/unicorn rides, and besides, you’re fighting for the desired outcome: not getting sidetracked by unimportant changes but instead finishing the project so that the client can get the writing out into the world.

By honoring your own contracts, you also avoid feeling resentful of your client later when you’re trapped in a cycle of endless free revisions and perfectionism.

Mistake #3 – Leave the scope vague.

Years ago, a software company hired me to write 20-30 pages of new web content. I wrote the content and got final approval.

As far as I was concerned, the project was finished.

Then, the client changed the design and layout of various page templates. I got the news in an email: “Hey, we tweaked the designs. Can you just condense that all the content? Thanks!”

The smaller problem was this: The new designs had significantly less room for content. On each page 400 words would need to become 200, and despite assumptions clients may have, the process of condensing is never as simple as removing 200 words.

The bigger problem was this: My contract was vague about the scope, word count, revisions, and the approval process.

One client might define a “web page” as a long-form product description with 1000 words of educational content. Another client might thin of a “web page” as

250 words of tight sales copy. Two different types of pages require more or less time and expertise to deliver.

And what about the equally significant time difference between polishing up old content and writing new content from scratch?

Scope creep will bite you in the derrier.

Sure enough, I had to eat the extra time and trim down ALL of those pages. Vagueness in the scope doubled the time I had to put in the project and cut my effective hourly rate in half. Ouch.

When you’re scoping out a project and assigning a price to that scope, be sure to explain what is and is not included.

Here are some areas that your contract should address:

What is the cap on the per-page word count?

How many revisions does the price include?

How do you differentiate between light and heavy editing?

Who will be responsible for keyword research?

Will you be writing custom meta data for web pages?

Are you drafting, editing, and proofreading/spell-checking?

What happens if the client changes the designs that you used to make your estimates mid-project?

How do you define the end product that you’re selling? A certain number of drafts of a certain number of pages at a certain price, whether or not they feel like those drafts are ready to go live?

How will you handle additional payments if the client opts to add to the scope or buy more revisions mid-project?

What happens if the client gives final approval then later changes his or her mind?

If you require a 50% up-front deposit before adding a project to your queue, how will you handle the remaining 50%?

I break up the balance into two to four payments.

After years of waiting for clients to send feedback so that I could finish the project and paid, I decided enough was enough.

Not sending feedback was a stall tactic in some cases. There’s a distorted logic there: “If we don’t finish the project yet, then I don’t have to pay yet, and if I don’t respond to emails, then we can’t finish the project. Genius!”

When a client doesn’t want to cough up the dough, then you are at his or her mercy unless you decide to sue. A lawsuit will probably cost you more money than it recovers.

I wish I could say I had ferreted out a way to get paid on time every time. No dice.

Here is what I have landed: In the client service agreement, I tie post-deposit payments to dates, not project-related milestones. Even if a client goes dark mid-project, I send invoices on the those dates.

Clients are contractually obligated to pay those invoices, and though some folks will certainly ignore your invoices (and legal agreements), they are in the minority.

Invoices get most clients attention.

You can also simply stop working on the project.

If your clients aren’t honoring their side of your agreement, then you are within your rights to prioritize other projects. Your clients aren’t working for free, and they stop working when their clients and customers stop paying.

You’re being practical, not ruthless: “Hey, glad to hear you’re back in the office and ready to finish this project. Go ahead and process those two outstanding payments, and then we can get this knocked out quickly.”

Mistake #5 – Use email to express frustration.

Email is never the appropriate medium for expressing frustration. There’s simply too much open for misinterpretation in emails. It’s too easy to slip in passive-aggressive jabs and to start thinking the other person is a real jerk.

When you are frustrated, pick up the phone. When you sense frustration from a client, pick up the phone. You can lead with this line: “Hi there. I wanted to give you a quick call after I got your email. In it you seemed upset. Let’s talk about it.”

More often than not, the client will backpedal on the aggressive or accusatory language that he used in the email. Or he will apologize. Or he will explain what was going on in his head.

The two of you can work together to resolve the problem instead of using email to exacerbate it.

Or he may dish out more abuse. You don’t want clients who treat you that way. Professionalism goes both ways. You may help your clients, but that doesn’t entitle them to treat you like “the help.”

Mistake #6 – Don’t explain your writing process.

For whatever reason some clients have a hard time understanding that a first draft is just that: a first draft.

I like Peter Elbow’s book Writing Without Teachers (affiliate link). In it Elbow compares writing to cooking. You throw some ingredients into a pot and let them simmer. You taste the stew and add more salt. As the flavors meld, you dial in the herbs and spices.

Writers know that this is how writing works. If your client doesn’t love what you sent over, there is no cause for alarm. You want the client to love the stew, and you can change anything to better fit her taste. Writing for clients, especially the ones with lots of their own opinions, always involves give and take.

Though it’s nice when the client loves your first drafts, not nailing them doesn’t mean that you’ve wasted your time (or the client’s money). Imperfect first drafts mean that you are in the middle of the writing process and that you need to adjust the flavor for the client’s palate.

When I first began writing for client, I didn’t understand why I should have to explain my writing process. They write emails, project briefs, and other stuff everyday. Surely everyone knows how writing works?!

Nope. Many clients think of writing as transmitting thoughts to a page, not cooking a stew. When your first drafts don’t meet their standard, they want to blame a garbled transmission, a critical error.

Sometimes our writing simply doesn’t get the job done. We have to make our peace with that. More often, however, the client simply doesn’t understand the process of writing.

Writers aren’t machines that stamp out staples and iPhone cases. We must synthesize many disparate pieces of information and turn them into a cohesive whole. We’re cooks.

You and I know that one weak spoonful of stew doesn’t mean the whole meal is ruined. Still, we have to communicate how the process works. We have to diffuse in advance a client’s potential freakout moments.

Communicating your process also positions you as the expert. You’ll get less pushback during the project.

Mistake #7 – Don’t start by writing and discussing sample pages.

Like most of us, clients don’t know exactly what they do want until they see what they don’t want.

I give them two or three pages of content then ask for feedback. That sample gives us something concrete to discuss. What do they like? What do they dislike?

I only miss the mark on a few pages, not all of the pages, and later, I can bake their preferences into the remaining first drafts and work more efficiently.

In the past I have made the mistake of finishing a big batch of content, and then after a client took issue with stylistic choices I made throughout, I felt sick to my stomach. I had wasted so much time!

Mistake #8 – Don’t age for quality.

Finish your drafts. Let them sit for a few days or over the weekend, and when you come back, you’ll notice rough spots you missed before.

You know this. Clients know this too. We all experienced this in grade school with our essays and term papers.

And yet, when our clients have their own deadlines and they need this ad copytomorrow, they forget that we cannot promise the same level of quality if the turnaround doesn’t leave any time for aging.

You have to be painfully honest with them:

“I cannot do my best work in this timeframe. It’s not for want of skill. It’s that good writing involvesaging for quality. That step is an intrinsic part of the creative process.”

You can say this, and clients will be impressed at how much you care. And then they will say, “I still need it tomorrow.”

That’s fine. You can say yes with integrity. You can say yes with assurance that any blemishes won’t hurt the client’s opinion of you.

We all know it’s highly unusual to do our very best work very fast with something big at stake. Writing may be cooking, but writing gains quality and character the same way as wine: over time.

This is sensible, logical. So age for quality.

And if you don’t have enough time to achieve top quality, then set realistic expectations with your client. Better to be a wet blanket in the short term than to cause clients to believe that you lack talent.

Mistake #9 – Miss deadlines.

That’s what I advise now that I’ve done the opposite and asked for extensions.

Worse, I have asked the client a basic question about the project the day before the deadline: “Hey client, I’ve got a really important question and I can’t finish the project until you give me a definitive answer to my really, really important earth-shattering question.”

I wasn’t fooling anyone. If I had started the project sooner, I would have asked that question sooner. Rather than buy me time, the question signaled that I was getting a late start.

Austin for the loss!

Lack of clarity around the project requirements wasn’t the problem. Mismanagement of my time was the problem.

These days, when a freelancer asks me an “important” question the day I expected to receive the finished product, I roll my eyes and move that freelancer down on my list.

We have our work cut out for us. In order to beat deadlines, we must first fight for realistic timelines. Then, we must manage projects effectively. Then, we must allow for the aging period. Then, we must allocate time for any back-and-forth.

Relationships die from a thousand cuts. Or they gain strength from a thousand promises kept.

Mistake #10 – Don’t define success.

Have you ever done the right thing for the wrong person?

There was this one guy who wanted me to stuff keywords into these excellent—he even said so!—product descriptions I had written for him.

I tried to explain that keyword stuffing isn’t effective anymore. I dug up and shared links from Moz.com and Search Engine Land to prove that I knew my stuff and was looking out for him. Google penalizes keyword stuffing.

He didn’t listen to a word.

What’s a conscientious freelance writer to do?

For starters, I wish that we had outlined the project requirements in advance in a project brief.

I defined success as “excellent original content,” and in my mind “excellent” would not include outdated SEO tactics that Google would penalize. After all, what good is excellent content if Google buries it on the seventh page of results and no one ever sees it?

Be that as it may, my client defined success as writing that fit his preferences, which include SEO tactics that stopped being effective several years ago.

He was convinced that he knew best. No amount of articles and videos from widely recognized thought leaders would convince him otherwise.

Don’t bang your head against a brick wall if you don’t have to! Use a brief to outline the project requirements and define what success looks like for your client. If they won’t listen to reason and adjust that definition, give them exactly what they want. And start looking for a new client.

One definition of a bad client is someone who will ignore your advice yet blame you for poor results.

A project brief would have saved me time and frustration.

Do you use a project brief template?

You should. If you don’t have one of your own, you’re welcome to use mine. Plug in your name and email address below, and I’ll send you the download link for it.

Over the last ten years I have managed the development of dozens of websites and have contributed as a writer to dozens more.

All these projects have convinced that most website projects shouldn’t take as long as they do. We’re not putting men on Mars here. Assuming you’re not building a full-fledged web application, your site will have anywhere from 5 to 50 pages of content.

So what gives? What root causes explain why simple websites—what developers refer to “brochure sites”—become a comedy of errors? (Actually, a tragedy of delays would be more accurate.)

Let’s delve into six ways that you can shoot yourself in the foot (and annoy your web developer at the same time).

1) Missing Assets

Most of the actual work goes into that duct tape, and though writing code can eat up many hours of time, developers want to write code. Writing code is how they get paid, so it is in their best interest to do the work. (Granted, developers may procrastinate or mismanage their time, but for the most part, they want to get paid.)

And neither is the wireframing and design phase the underlying cause of major delays. Like developers designers want to get paid. My designers can produce beautiful wireframes in a week or less, and they typically nail the rough design and layout on the first go. Assuming we can get approval within a reasonable timeframe, finalizing the designs might take another week.

So where do the delays originate?

A website cannot live on code alone. We need all the assets that stick to the digital duct tape:

Vector file of your logo (typically with an .eps or .ai file extension)

Other brand assets, including your corporate color palette and fonts

High-res headshots for your team members

Other photos for your products, services, or projects

High-res video files

Written content for the various web pages

Testimonials

Client logos

Case studies

Product spec sheets

PDFs of brochures and other sales collateral

And the list goes on. You begin to see the issue in the sequence of events:

The client orders up a website.

The developer says, “Before we can make any real progress, I need this list from you.”

The client says, “Oh. Okay. Let me get back to you.”

The developer waits.

(Cue the Jeopardy theme song.)

If my clients are short on anything, it’s time, so it’s easy for tedious tasks like “Find the logo file Austin asked for” to get buried under more urgent tasks.

The client demurs. The developer twiddle his thumbs. Developers certainly don’t want to play Sherlock Holmes in their clients’ hard drives, and they usually don’t have access anyway.

Before you know it, a tiny detail like locating the vector file or the CEO’s most recent headshot has stalled out the entire project.

If you want your website to proceed smoothly and quickly after those exciting discovery sessions, then tie off these three items beforehand:

Most of your assets already accounted for;

Time-boxed plan to find missing assets; and

Contingency plan—that is, extra budget—to create any design, photography, or writing that can’t be found or never existed

Or you can cater to my preference, which is skipping straight from #1 to #3. I prefer extra budget for three reasons:

I get paid more. (Of course I would recommend this option, right?)

I can bring in my favorite design, photography, and writing freelancers and pay them to do what they do best.

I gain more control over the timeline, which means that I can bring the project to a successful conclusion faster.

This extra budget means fewer obstacles, less friction, and launching the website sooner. Launching the website sooner is good because then it can start paying for itself sooner.

2) Missing Credentials

If missing assets don’t get you, missing credentials will.

To kick off a project, I ask my clients for these log-in credentials:

Website Hosting Account – We will need some place to store all the files. Your website hosting account is your digital storage unit. DreamHost, Hostgator, and Namecheap are three examples of large hosting companies.

Domain Registrar – Your domain registrar is where you registered your domain. For example, AustinLChurch.com is registered with GoDaddy.

Content Management System (CMS) Admin Portal or Dashboard – You will log into this dashboard post-launch to make changes and do routine maintenance. Notable examples include WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace, or Craft CMS.

Google Webmasters Search console – We want to keep Google happy so that you have better SEO and get more organic traffic. To do that, we’ll need to, among other things, optimize your website’s loading speed and ensure that Google’s bots are crawling your site and indexing all the right pages.

Google Analytics – We will integrate analytics with your new website or ensure a smooth transition from the old site to the new one.

Your Email Service – We need to make sure that transitioning from the old to the new site doesn’t blow up your email.

If we are building your first website or if your existing website was built using static HTML, then you won’t have have a CMS. That’s okay. We’ll set one up for you.

And we may also ask you to change hosting companies. We prefer to build a fully functional test site on a staging server before we go live with the final version of the site that you approve. Some hosting companies make pushing a site from a staging (or test) server to a production (or live) server unnecessarily complex.

Other hosting companies make it easy to follow these best practices, so we prefer to host our clients’ sites with them.

It’s a win-win. Your site takes less time to build and launch, which means fewer headaches for us and lower costs that we pass on to you.

Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. The problem isn’t that clients don’t trust us to make the right recommendations. The problem is that when we ask clients for the keys to their house, they don’t have them.

We may spend many moons and more emails trying to track down the username and password for your hosting account.

This sleuthing work is like trying to unravel the plot twists in a soap opera:

The client had the credentials but misplaced them.

Or, someone at the company, such as the office manager, had them and subsequently left the company. The credentials got lost in the shuffle.

Or, the client never asked the original developer for them.

Or, the client asked the original developer, but s/he made a case for not sharing them—e.g., “Sending via email isn’t a good idea. What if your email account gets hacked?” Both parties dropped the conversation.

Or, the client and the original developer had a misunderstanding.

Or, the client didn’t pay one of the developer’s bill, and the developer responds in kind by holding the credentials hostage.

Such drama and intrigue!

To be fair, conscientious developers are reluctant to share credentials because they don’t want a non-expert logging into the hosting account, doing dumb stuff, and jacking up the website (which the developer will then have to fix).

Even so, the mad scramble to locate credentials is so common it is hilarious. Smart business owners whose companies generate X millions in revenue each year can’t who access their own websites: talk about a liability!

The remedy for this situations is obvious.

Before you ask your new developer to add you to his or her production queue, go ahead and gather up all of those credentials.

If you can’t find your username and password, then contact the companies or use initiate the “forgot password” sequence.

If you cannot even name your domain registrar, website hosting company, and content management system, then look up your site on whois.net. You might find some clues there.

Then, ask your new developer to look at your website’s source code and figure out whether you have a static HTML site, particular CMS, or some other Frankenstein creation.

Keep them in one central location. LastPass, 1Password, or even a Google Sheet with restricted permissions will do.

Pro Tip: If your developer ever tells you he can’t email your credentials, ask him to write them down on a sheet of paper and text you the photo.

Photo Credit: Ayo Ogunseinde via Unsplash

3) Missing Decisions (or Too Many Decision-Makers)

Once we get the assets and credentials, or at least have a plan for getting them, we can start on the real work.

And once we mock up page designs and write first drafts of content, you will have to give feedback. You will have to make decisions.

At Wunderbar we have encountered at this most delightful of junctures two specific challenges:

1) The decision-maker becomes a moving target. We can’t pin you down long enough to get an answer to our questions. We need for you to say. “Yes. Looks good. Let’s proceed.” Then we can hustle on to the next task.

2) Two stakeholders give contradictory feedback. They cannot agree on the right color of blue or which version of the mission statement to use.

Maybe you’ve heard the term “design by committee”? The negative connotations are well deserved.

Consensus is important. Leaders and other stakeholders must have clear, copious, consistent communication. They must agree on the company’s vision and the path toward it. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

But unfortunately, what we have encountered is that dialogue around the website—design direction, branding and positioning, content strategy, and even the decision about who has ultimate decision-making authority—opens a can of worms.

Suddenly, unresolved conflict rises to the surface. Suddenly, “the website” becomes about winning a fight, not moving the company forward.

Should the admittedly brilliant CEO choose the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors and fonts simply because he is the CEO? What if he’s one of those people whose expertise goes deep but not wide? What if he can barely match a tie to his button-up shirt?

A thousand decisions can result in a thousand disagreements. The buck needs to stop with one person. Who is the right person? And how can you avoid wasting time on flareups and disagreements as you try to build consensus?

Turn your “design by committee” into a single decision-maker.

Determine in advance who that person is.

Make it clear that the whole team, including executive leaders, must respect that person’s authority.

If you are not that decision-maker, do your very best to not meddle.

Agree upon a timeframe for making decisions with your developer. For example, I typically give my clients 48 hours to review web content. Or I might send them several logo concepts on a Friday afternoon, and ask them to pick one by the following Tuesday. Decisions without deadlines become delays. (You should tweet that.)

Carve out margin so that you can make decisions. Nobody likes feeling rushed while making important decisions.

Chances are, if you’re dragging you’re feet, it’s because you didn’t block out thirty minutes in your calendar to read the web content, mull it over, and respond with a bullet-point list of edits.

This isn’t aerospace engineering. You can make decisions within 48 hours if you actually take the time to review what your web developer sent.

4) Decision Fatigue

Decision fatigue is a real phenomenon, and web developers contribute to their clients’ fatigue by asking them to flex their decision-making muscle for too many times.

The fact is, when it comes to websites, I have more experience and expertise than my clients. I usually make better decisions for them than they can or will make for themselves. By sending them five WordPress themes and asking which one they like the best, I am not empowering or serving them. I am contributing to their decision fatigue.

For busy owners and executives, more choices doesn’t equate more value.

More value is simplicity. More value is speed. More value is a seasoned professional providing a done-for-you service and liberating clients from dozens of decisions. McDonald’s gives you a hundred options, but Michelin star restaurants give you a pre fixe menu.

Based on a decade’s worth of close observation, I believe my clients care more about “Done” and ROI than extra options and true originality. Were I to give them extra options, I would be serving up a hot plate of analysis paralysis.

So my web developer friends, this one is on us. It’s up to us to restrict the flow of decisions so that our clients can focus on the ones of true import and impact.

It is a fine option for most of my clients, so I will say something like this:

“This is the WordPress theme I think we should use. It has the flexibility we need in order to do some light customization and add your branding. Also, the people who created the theme are still in business. They can help us if we run into any issues. I simply need a yes from you so that we can move to the next step.”

Yeses are important. Client buy-in is important.

But if you really want to do your clients a solid, then simplify their lives by giving them fewer choices to make.

Brief Caveat on Trust Issues…

For Developers – If your clients don’t trust you to limit their choices, then you haven’t positioned yourself as the expert. You are the order taker, not the trusted guide. You might want to take a closer look at your own branding and positioning. Or you might need to phase out old clients and get new ones who do trust you. In the meantime, if you have a tolerable client who wants to be involved in every decision, then double the timeline. If you have a client who second-guesses your every decision, then have a come to Jesus chat with him or her. (Before you do, check out Carl Smith’s story in this post.)

For Clients – Don’t hire a team that you don’t trust to make expert decisions on your behalf. Not sure whether you will like their choices? Ask to see some of their past work. Ask for references. Once they pass muster, set them free to do what they do best so that you’ll be free to do what you do best. You can do that with a simple request: “Please bring only the most important, impactful decisions to me. Otherwise, make choices for me that are at least as good as the choices you’d make for yourself.”

5) Missing Deadlines

I do this all the time. A client has an emergency, and rather than finish writing my new bio so that my web developer can get it up, I help my client. This is admirable, and under most circumstances, helping a client or customer solve a problem is a surefire way to stay in business.

But new websites aren’t severed arteries, which is why you need a polite but firm project manager to crack the whip.

We get excited about what a new site can do for our companies, and both the client and the developer enjoy building momentum. Both benefit from meeting or beating deadlines. Both want to bring the site to a successful conclusion because the client wants ROI and the developer wants repeat business, a testimonial, and referrals.

Yet, the design and development process itself may feel like a part-time job: “Review this. Approve this. Pick three. Remove two. What is your final decision?”

Multiple milestones and deadlines help to keep the project on track because they break up a huge, monolithic undertaking into more manageable goals.

At the same time, missed deadlines are the canary in the coal mine. They indicate ineffective project management.

So pick 6-8 deadlines for your project. Stick to them come hell or high water.

For Clients – If you have a history of being “slippery,” then take a novel approach. Overpay your developer by $6,000, and have them refund $1,000 for every deadline you meet.

Let the prospect of losing each $1,000 motivate you to stick to the plan.

6) Perfectionism (aka, Broken Process)

I usually convince clients to launch a “lite” version of the new website with language like this: “Let’s take a phased approach and get a stripped down version of the site live as quickly as possible. We can always add to it later.”

Of course, different kinds of websites deserve different timelines. Thousands of lines of code can’t be rushed without quality suffering.

But five-, ten-, 20-page brochure sites? The best approach is launching a Lite version then iterating it.

Clients tend to agree and still drag their feet: “Lite version? Sure. But it is really important that we get our new vision statement on the website, and Bob doesn’t return from China until Friday of next week.”

The delays snowball from there.

Perfect is the enemy of done. An unlaunched site cannot pay for itself.

Until you have a new site in place generating conversions and leads, you have sunk costs: not an investment, not even a website, but a pebble in your shoe that causes pain without delivering value of any kind.

The longer you wait to go live with your site, the more opportunities you miss.

Thus, the longer you wait to go live, the more expensive your website becomes. Waiting on Bob to weigh-in so that the team can perfect that new visioning statement can become a costly decision.

Ask yourself these two questions:

How much will the brand really suffer if you go ahead and launch a lite version of the site quickly?

Will customers leave in droves if we use some old/imperfect/incomplete placeholder content?

It’s important to recognize that we more sensitive to our perceived flaws than customers are.

I liken this sensitivity to the high school kid on his way to prom. As he adjusts his bowtie, he notices a zit.

“What is that? Oh no!” he thinks. “How could this happen?!” With mounting anxiety, he starts working on the zit.

It turns into an angry red beacon pulsating on his forehand, and because he is now self-conscious, our protagonist mentions the zit to his date. She glances at his forehead, and shrugs.

“I probably wouldn’t have noticed it unless you drew my attention to it,” she says.

Crap.

We are more conscious of our blemishes than the people whom we hope to impress. That’s why we can safely launch a lite version, even with imperfect content, and iterate quickly.

This would not be a good advice for a big brand like Coca-Cola. Public backlash is a real thing when you’re getting gobs of traffic. But most companies’ websites do not get gobs of traffic.

Only a fraction of your web visitors are true prospects, and only a fraction of a fraction might behave like this:

Land on your new site.

Click through several pages.

Run across one of your blemishes.

Notice the blemish.

Form a negative opinion about your company.

Leave your website and never do business with you.

Why would anyone wait to launch a perfect site if the benefits of launching a lite, imperfect site are more apparent? No one said perfectionism was logical.

Whenever possible, I persuade Wunderbar’s clients to take a phased approach to their websites. Launch a lite version quickly. Iterate quickly. Use Google Analytics and real data about people’s behavior to make decisions about what content to add or what adjustments to make.

Conclusion

Most people spend way too long getting a new website up, but you don’t have to be one of them. Follow these rules of thumb, and your new site will be making you money in no time:

Collect your assets in advance.

Collect your credentials in advance.

Avoid design by committee, and give one person the final say.

Don’t micromanage your developers but instead flex that decision-making muscle only for the most important decisions.

Meet deadlines.

Launch quickly. Iterate quickly.

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What did I forget? If you think other factors contribute to delays, chime in with a comment below.

]]>https://austinlchurch.com/6-ways-annoy-your-website-developer/feed/7Take pride in being a freelancer.https://austinlchurch.com/take-pride-being-freelancer/
https://austinlchurch.com/take-pride-being-freelancer/#respondMon, 14 Aug 2017 17:29:07 +0000http://austinlchurch.com/?p=2774As factors like globalization and technology change how we work, more people will take pride in being a freelancer.

My friend Ryan Waggoner and I were catching up last Thursday, and he told me about a recent conversation he’d had with one of his email subscribers.

“I like your stuff, but your 250k course isn’t for me,” the woman explained in an email. “I’m not a freelancer.”

“What do you do?” Ryan asked.

“I’m a marketing consultant.”

“Cool. So you work for an agency?”

“Oh, I don’t work at an agency. I’ve got my own clients.”

Ryan and I puzzled over that situation. We both identify as freelancers. We’re also consultants. And independent contractors. And small business owners.

And if I’m feeling really frisky on a Friday afternoon, I might even call myself … gasp … an entrepreneur.

I find some people’s reluctance to own the title “freelance” puzzling but not surprising. In the words of the Captain from Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Let’s clear up the confusion in terms before we attempt to understand why some creative professionals distance themselves from the word “freelancer.”

What is a freelancer anyway?

In his novel Ivanhoe (1820) Sir Walter Scott describes a “medieval mercenary warrior” as a “free-lance.” These independent warriors of the 1700s had the freedom to pursue causes and compensation that fit their preferences. (Hat tip to Navaneeth for the etymology I found in his “So Called Freelancing” story)

I think Wikipedia’s definition is too narrow because I know plenty of self-proclaimed freelancers who like their 9-to-5 jobs. They have no plans to turn their side hustles into full-time gigs.

Thus, the broader definition in the “Freelancing in America: 2016” published by the Freelancers Union and Upwork strikes me as the more accurate one: freelancers are “individuals who have engaged in supplemental, temporary, or project- or contract-based work in the past 12 months.”

Some part-time freelancers have 9-to-5 jobs. Other freelancers run their own businesses full-time and depend on those businesses for all of their income. What percentage of your income you make from contract work or what you choose to call yourself is beside the point.

We can resolve the confusion in terms like this: “Freelancer” describes one type of relationship between a creative and his or her client. “Employee” describes another type of relationship.

If you have at least one client to whom you send a W-9 and from whom, come tax season, you receive a 1099, then you are a freelancer. That is a statement of fact, not a judgment about your capabilities or degree of professionalism.

Photo Credit: serzhile via Flickr

Why do some people not like being called “freelancers”?

Without doing a deep dive into semantics, I think we can safely assume that for some people resist the title of “freelancer” because it somehow minimizes their accomplishments or expertise.

I’ve brushed up against these negative connotations myself. When I describe myself as a freelance writer, do I run the risk of being pigeon-holed? After all, I do other things for clients, and I prefer roles, such as a content consultant or marketing automation specialist, because I can charge more for them and generate higher ROI.

In summary, I empathize with Ms. Marketing Consultant, and if I don’t catch myself, I may can have a chip on my shoulder: “Hey, just because I’m a freelancer doesn’t mean I couldn’t hack it at an agency! I don’t wear sweatpants all day.”

(Then again, why should it matter what I or we wear? In a recent Sunday Dispatch, Paul Jarvis said he swears by the ones that he buys at Costco.)

Freelancers are professionals, not fly-by-night practitioners of the dark arts with a helping of graphic design on the side.

We have the experience, expertise, and moxie to do the project better and faster than many agencies because we are more agile. We are less encumbered by high overhead, payroll, and concerns about dysfunctional culture or keeping bad-fit clients so that the ship doesn’t sink.

Many freelancers are smart, creative, talented, ambitious, and caring—exactly the kind of people companies want to hire.

Success in Freelancing

Be that as it may, freelancers must walk a fine line. I can’t help but think of this line from Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The more we strive to legitimize our way of doing business, the more we stigmatize it. The more we defend ourselves, the more suspicious we become.

So let’s speak softly and carry big sticks. The key is to not fixate on titles and labels like “freelancer” but to instead focus on being fair, reliable, and reasonable (that is, easy to work with) and on doing excellent work.

In his Keynote Address to the University of the Arts Class of 2012, author Neil Gaiman summed up success in freelancing quite nicely:

“People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today’s world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They’ll forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as the others if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.”

Why should more people become freelancers?

The Great Recession will continue to affect economies around the world, and globalization, technology, and the ever-growing convenience of communication and money transfer will continue to shape how we work.

These “environmental” factors will make freelancing more than a realistic possibility. Rather, freelancing is inevitable for millions of people around the world. People who freelance in some capacity already make up 35% of the U.S. workforce, and that number will likely grow to 50% by 2020.

Work will look very different for 75 million Americans in the future than it has in the past.

Believe it or not, this is good news! 79% of the respondents to the “Freelancing in America: 2016” survey believe that freelancing is better than a traditional job, and 63% work as freelancers voluntarily.

For people who have never considered freelancing, those statistics might come as a shock. Yet, many smart professionals become and stay freelancers because they want a different lifestyle.

You might say they want a better benefits package:

Freedom

Mobility

Flexibility

Autonomy

Passion

Curiosity

Upside

Unlimited vacation time

It’s a fine thing to be a freelancer.

So let’s make our peace with the title. Let’s make “freelancer” part of our barbaric yawp, a positive statement about what one values:

“I am an individual who values my freedom, and I value that freedom more than the supposed stability of a salaried position.”

“Freelancer” certainly doesn’t mean that the person in question got an “F” in business. Maybe the “F” stands for “fun” and “freedom,” not “failure.”

Of course, there will always be people who try to minimize the title. When they say “So you’re a freelancer?” They mean “So you’re just a freelancer?”

Fine. Whatever. Starting a business (and staying in business) is one of the more difficult things anyone can do and an accomplishment to be proud of. Leave your gainfully employed naysayers to their smugness while you go use your funemployment to triple your income.

Sawdust

“Freelancer” need not be a pejorative.

The new economy and a world that technology is shrinking will give rise to a new class of professionals who can have their cake and eat it too. Maybe freelancers are mercenaries after all. We enlist for the right causes and compensation.

Why not embrace the title and embrace the freedom? Why not start mastering the Unagency model now? You’ll have a leg up on more reluctant freelancers who worry too much about labels.

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Addendum: Some of my favorite people own agencies and dev shops, or work at them, or both. The creatives do brilliant work for cool clients. For certain projects, I recommend them to my clients, not freelancers. Were you to get a job at one of their agencies, you would be keeping good company. I envision an exciting both/and future, not a false either/or dichotomy.